Name Development: Naming Your Company, Product or Service

Posted January 19th, 2009

Any good copywriter can generate names, which means that any good ad agency is a potential vendor for your naming project. Problem is, there are too many ad agencies to choose from, which is why many naming assignments go to professional naming companies. There are far fewer of them, making it easier to choose. A naming company will do an exhaustive job but if budget is a consideration, they may not be the best choice for your naming project. Sometimes you just want to see a list of possible names without all the services that a naming company provides. These services include competitive analysis, brand positioning, trademark research and testing. If you are not prepared to pay for a soup-to-nuts approach to naming and would prefer to go straight to name development then consider an ad agency that at least has a track record of generating imaginative and memorable names. When Alianda works on naming assignments we typically generate anywhere between 100 and 300 names; names that may be suggestive of a feature, benefit or experience, and names that just sound good and different. We’re often asked about the origin of the name Alianda. Many small companies often find their unique name through a process of combining family names or parts of family names. It’s a tried and true technique and that’s exactly what Alianda is–a combination of select syllables from Alicia, Kiana and Daniel– the wife and kids of the company’s founder. In addition to mixing and matching parts of names, you’ll also generate lists of possibilities by playing around with prefixes and suffixes and combining them with different words (or parts of words) suggestive of any number of concepts and ideas that may apply to the nature of your company, product or service. Naming is a wordsmith’s delight. You should expect to see lots of good choices. Narrow the list, follow your gut, get other people’s opinions and just name it!

Tags: names, Naming, naming company